Star-nosed mole

The star-nosed mole is a small animal.

It lives in wet lands and marshes.

It has a nose shaped like a star. This star has many tiny bumps. These bumps help the mole feel things.

The mole cannot see very well. It uses its nose to find food. It can even smell under the water!

This mole is a very fast eater. It finds and eats food in a blink. It is the fastest eater in the world.

It can swim in cold streams. It also digs tunnels in the snow. This little mole is very busy.

The star-nosed mole is a small animal. It lives in wet areas like marshes.

This mole has a very special nose. It looks like a star with 22 fleshy parts. These parts are called appendages. The star is covered in tiny bumps. We call these bumps Eimer's organs. There are more than 25,000 of them! These organs help the mole feel its way around. They are very sensitive to touch.

The mole cannot see well. It uses its nose like a set of eyes. It uses the smallest rays to find food. This helps the mole make a map of its world. The mole is the fastest eater in the world. It can find and eat food in 120 milliseconds. That is very fast! Its brain decides if food is good in only eight milliseconds. This is near the fastest speed a brain can work.

This mole is a good swimmer. It can find food at the bottom of ponds. It can even smell things while underwater. It blows air bubbles to help it smell. This mole stays active even in the cold winter.

The star-nosed mole is a tiny, semiaquatic animal. It lives in wet, low places in the northeastern parts of North America.

You might find them in marshes or even in dry meadows. They are very good at staying warm in the cold. This helps them swim in ice-covered streams during the winter. They are active during both the day and the night. This little mole is quite a busy explorer of the wet world.

This mole has a very special nose shaped like a star. The star has 22 fleshy parts called appendages. These parts are covered in tiny bumps called Eimer's organs. There are more than 25,000 of these small organs on the nose.

These organs make the nose six times more sensitive than a human hand. The mole uses these bumps to feel its way around in the dark. It works like a tactile eye to help the mole sense its world.

Because the mole cannot see well, its nose does the work of eyes. A scientist named Kenneth Catania has studied these moles for 20 years. He found that the mole uses its smallest rays to touch food. These are the 11th pair of rays on the star.

The mole moves these rays quickly to focus on things. This is very much like how human eyes move to see clearly. The nose helps the mole build a map of everything it touches.

This animal is actually the fastest-eating mammal in the world. It can identify and eat a tiny piece of food in just 120 milliseconds.

Its brain is incredibly fast, too. It takes only eight milliseconds to decide if food is good to eat. This speed is near the fastest a brain can possibly work. Most humans take 600 milliseconds to do a similar task. This speed helps the mole find many small insects and worms.

Many different animals try to catch the star-nosed mole. Predators include foxes, weasels, and even large fish like the northern pike.

The mole also has to watch out for owls and hawks. Even domestic cats can be a danger to them. To stay safe, the mole digs shallow tunnels in the ground. These tunnels can even go underwater in streams or ponds. The mole is a very skilled swimmer and a clever survivor.

The star-nosed mole, known scientifically as Condylura cristata, is a unique semiaquatic mammal. It lives in moist, low-elevation areas across northeastern North America. This species is the only living member of its genus and tribe. While it can be found in dry meadows, it prefers wet marshes and poorly drained areas. It is a skilled swimmer that forages along the bottoms of ponds and streams. The mole is also highly active during the winter. It can tunnel through snow and swim in streams covered by ice. This is possible because the mole is excellent at thermoregulation, which means it can maintain a high body temperature even in cold water.

The most striking feature of this mole is its nose. The snout is shaped like a star with 22 fleshy appendages, or tendrils. These appendages do not have muscles or bones of their own. Instead, they are controlled by tendons attached to muscles on the skull. The star is about 2.7 centimeters across, making it slightly smaller than a human fingertip. The surface of this star is covered in over 25,000 tiny sensory receptors called Eimer's organs. These organs were first described in 1872 by the German zoologist Theodor Eimer. While other moles have these organs, none have them in such high numbers. This makes the star-nosed mole's nose about six times more sensitive than a human hand.

The star-nosed mole uses its nose like a "tactile eye" to navigate in the dark. Because the mole is functionally blind, it relies on mechanical information to find prey. The star is divided into two main parts: a high-resolution central fovea and a lower-resolution periphery. The fovea consists of the 11th pair of rays, which are the shortest appendages. When the mole touches something interesting, it makes rapid movements to position these 11th rays over the object. Neuroscientist Kenneth Catania has noted that these movements are very similar to saccadic eye movements in humans. Saccades are the quick jumps our eyes make when moving between focus points. This allows the mole to focus on important details with extreme precision.

This specialized sensory system allows the mole to be the fastest-eating mammal in the world. It can identify and consume a single food item in as little as 120 milliseconds. On average, the process takes about 227 milliseconds. The mole's brain is incredibly efficient at processing this information. It takes only eight milliseconds for the brain to decide if a piece of prey is edible. This speed is near the physical limit of how fast neurons can function. To put this in perspective, the entire process of responding to touch and sending a motor command takes only 25 milliseconds. In contrast, a similar process in a human takes about 600 milliseconds.

The mole's brain is physically organized to support this incredible speed. About 52% of the mole's somatosensory cortex is dedicated to processing information from the nose. This means more than half of its brain is focused on its sense of touch. The brain uses a somatotopic organization, meaning parts of the nose are mapped to specific areas of the brain. Interestingly, the 11th pair of rays has a larger representation in the brain than its physical size would suggest. This is because the fovea is so vital for survival. The brain even shows visible stripes that represent the different rays of the star.

The diet of the star-nosed mole consists of many small invertebrates. It eats aquatic insects like caddisflies, midges, and dragonflies. It also consumes larvae from damselflies, crane flies, and horseflies. Other food sources include earthworms, leeches, mollusks, and aquatic crustaceans. Sometimes, the mole will even eat small fish or amphibians. To find food underwater, the mole uses a clever smelling technique. It exhales air bubbles onto an object or a scent trail. It then inhales those bubbles to carry the scents back into its nose.

Despite its specialized skills, the star-nosed mole faces many predators. It must avoid birds like red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, and various screech owls. Land predators include foxes, weasels, minks, and skunks. Even large fish like the northern pike or domestic cats can be a threat. To protect itself, the mole digs shallow tunnels for foraging. These tunnels often exit underwater, allowing the mole to move safely through its wet environment. The mole's life is a constant cycle of rapid sensing, eating, and hiding to survive in the North American wetlands.